“Yes.”
Mari took a deep breath and looked to Alain. He nodded back in agreement.
Another deep breath, and then Mari held the text carefully in both hands as she looked back at the librarians. “Exact copies? You can make exact copies? No errors? Every line, every drawing, perfect and correct?”
“That is our calling and our often-practiced skill,” Coleen confirmed eagerly.
“Then I do wish that you would make copies.” Mari swallowed nervously, then rushed out the rest of her words. “As long as they are exact copies, I would like to take the copies, and leave the originals with you, where they will be safe.”
An extended silence followed her words, then all of the librarians bowed to her, embarrassing Mari. Coleen straightened, fighting back tears. “You may be the daughter of Jules in truth, but you also have the soul of a librarian, Lady Mari. There is no way in which we can adequately repay you for a gift of this magnitude.”
“The texts aren’t mine,” Mari insisted. “They belong to everyone in this world. I’m not giving you anything that you don’t already have a right to.” She looked around, feeling very awkward, trying to find something else to talk about, and her eyes came to rest on the map of Urth and beside it the diagram of the Demeter. “What became of the great ship?” Mari asked. “It was so huge. Surely its remains must lie somewhere, or was it completely taken apart?”
“The ship was stripped of all it held and much of its structure.” Coleen pointed upwards. “The bones of the ship remain to this day, far above the sky we know, floating like the moon above this world.”
Mari jerked in surprise. “It’s still there above us? But we can’t see it?”
“Even the remains of the great ship are small compared to, say, the moon,” another librarian explained. “If we trained powerful far-seers on it, we could see the remains, but—”
“But,” Mari continued, “the Mechanics Guild has discouraged or banned anything to do with the study of the skies and the stars. Of course. They didn’t want anyone figuring out where we came from, or seeing the ship.” She shook her head, feeling her jaw tighten. “What incredible selfishness and arrogance.”
Alain had gone back to study the map of Urth. “Why did the ship come here? It must have been a tremendous undertaking.”
“We are no longer certain,” Coleen admitted. “I’m sure the truth lies somewhere in there,” she added, with a wave at the drawers full of shiny information coins. “But we no longer know which of the possible reasons we recall are true. Some say that it was simply adventure and exploration. Some that it was an attempt to spread humanity’s seed to the stars. Others think that such an expensive and enormous undertaking meant that they had no choice, that some disaster loomed which would cripple or even kill all who remained on Urth.”
Mari stared at Coleen. “Like a terrible storm?”
“We do not know,” she replied.
“If what we remember is true,” a male librarian said, “worlds can suffer enough variation in climate to cause serious problems. Then there are said to be huge stones floating in the vastness between stars, and sometimes these fall to a world, as if a mass equal to the entire island of Altis became a projectile to strike Dematr. You can imagine the damage. It is also said stars such our sun and the sun that warms Urth can change, becoming hotter, larger, or even exploding when their fuel is exhausted.”
“What?” Mari shook her head firmly. “I don’t know about the rest, but that last can’t be right. How can something explode after it runs out of fuel? An explosion needs something to feed it.”
“We do not know,” the librarian said with equal firmness, “but what remains to us says this can happen.”
“I don’t see how. What kind of fuel does a sun use, anyway?”
The librarian made a helpless gesture. “That knowledge was withheld from us by the Mechanics Guild’s founders.”
Alain was looking at another map. “This is Dematr, our world. But it looks more like a painting than a drawing.”
“It is an image,” Coleen explained. “Made from what were called orbital surveys when the great ship first arrived here.”
“I have been told how the world appears to one riding a Roc high in the sky,” Alain said. “This seems the same, but as if from a height no Roc could reach.” He pointed to the map. “There is the Dematr we know, the lands around the Sea of Bakre. But what is this far to the west across the Umbari Ocean?”
Mari answered before the librarians could. “The western continent? It’s real?”
“Yes,” Coleen said. “Far enough distant to be difficult to reach with the ships we have. Needless to say, the Great Guilds have not permitted any expeditions in search of it. As far as we know, no ship has ever gone there, and no people live there. Perhaps it has plants and animals such as those we know, or perhaps it is still like this world was before the great ship came.”
“You know so much,” Mari said softly. “You have kept so much knowledge safe. And yet there is still so much more to learn.”
Coleen smiled. “Those things are the definition of happiness for a librarian. That and sharing the knowledge we have.”
Mari walked carefully through the room, not quite touching the devices, noting that all had been kept clean and free of dust. The Mechanic in her admired the care with which the librarians had tried to maintain these things. “When I saw the texts in Marandur, and saw all of the amazing things they described, I knew it had to have come from somewhere. All of that technology had to have developed over many years, building on advance after advance.” Her gaze went to the maps again. “And now I know where it came from. Urth. Where our ancestors lived and hopefully our brothers and sisters still live. And now I also know how much was taken from us, and why, by those who founded the Mechanics Guild.”
She stopped in front of a very large box which rose slightly higher than her height and was about three times her width. Mari read the label on the device, which had words stamped into metal. “ ‘Transmitter.’ This is the largest far-talker I’ve ever seen. Why is it so big?”
The voice of the librarian who answered Mari was hushed. “It is designed to talk not to anyone on Dematr, but to the stars. This device is supposed to be able to send a message to Urth itself, and receive replies.”
Mari stared at the librarian, then back at the transmitter. “It has enough range to reach across a distance that took centuries to cover? Does it still work?”
“We don’t know. It should. It has never been activated.”
“Why not?”
Coleen answered this time, her voice resigned. “The Mechanics Guild forbade our ancestors to activate it. The librarians of the tower have survived these many years because the Guild wanted to have these devices and knowledge still available if they were needed to maintain control of this world. But we have always existed at the sufferance of the Mechanics Guild, for we have neither weapons nor defenses. Over time, knowledge of us may have faded in the Guild, a loss of memory probably aggravated by the purges which have occasionally resulted in the deaths of numerous Mechanics.”
“Purges?” Mari asked. “Was the last one of those about a century ago?”
“It was.” Coleen made a helpless gesture. “We have had no inspectors from the Mechanics Guild visit for many decades, and when you first appeared we feared that the Guild had remembered our presence here. But it appears the Guild has forgotten us. However, if we activate the transmitter, it might alert the Guild. We don’t know. We have never dared try it, for if the Guild learned we had done so then everything here could be lost.”